In 2007, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., led a delegation — including then-Rep. David Hobson, R-Springfield — to Damascus to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad at a time when the Bush administration was trying to isolate Assad.

That prompted Republican John Boehner of West Chester, then the Republican majority leader and now House speaker, to charge in an editorial meeting with Dispatch editors that Pelosi is “going for one reason, and that is to embarrass the president.”

“She is the speaker of the House,” Boehner said. “She’s giving (the Syrian) government more credit than they deserve. They sponsor terrorism. They have not been at all helpful. I wish she wasn’t there.”

It’s obvious that political parties are ever changing their ideals to what suits them for the moment, but at least Democrats know that their errors in 2007 and in earlier years were not as egregious as the recent two attempts to embarrass President Obama. The side-stepping and ignoring of the President for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to get to speak to the U.S. Senate was a terrible act. But the letter to Iran, I believe, is an act of political treachery matched only by Ronald Reagan’s craven negotiations with Iran behind the back of then-sitting President Jimmy Carter. One of the functions of the executive branch is to negotiate treaties. The Legislature gets to approve them later.

Our own Senator Ron Johnson is one of the signers of the infamous letter. That action on Johnson’s part should come as no surprise. Ron Johnson is the Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Senate. Whatever Justice Scalia says and does is dittoed by Clarence Thomas. Whatever conservative leadership does and says in the Senate dittohead Ron Johnson says and does. Johnson does not believe in global warming, evolution or the right of the President to negotiate with other countries.

Johnson as a follower of wrong headed political strategies is guilty of betraying the land he loves and the people he represents.